Category: Sermons

Published December 20, 2021

Mary – Eagerly Submitting to the Will of God

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at some of the key characters of the Christmas story. And I’m not talking about Rudolph or Santa Claus – that’s a different story all together! I’m talking about the original Christmas story – the historic events that actually happened some 2000 years ago and are still packed with meaning and significant for us even today.

And I expect that most of us are familiar with the events of that first Christmas – how Jesus was born and laid in a manger – how the angels appeared to the shepherds and how the wisemen brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Those are all the traditional Christmas scenes that we sing about in our Christmas carols or we display in our nativity arrangements.

And of course, if you’re not familiar with those events, I’d invite you to come to our Christmas Eve service this Friday as those events will be the focus of our Christmas celebration.

But for our Sunday morning messages as Christmas approaches, we’ve been taking a deeper look not at the events of Christmas, but rather at the characters of Christmas.

We started by looking at Jesus Himself. Who is this baby who was born and was laid in a manger? And what is so significant about that child that we continue to celebrate his birth even 2000 years later!? To find those answers, we looked in the Gospel of John and saw that Jesus was not just an ordinary baby, but was in fact, the second person of the Godhead – the eternally existing Creator of the world – now born as a human being. He truly is Emmanuel – which means God is with us. And what’s all the more amazing is that He came to be with us so that we could be with Him for eternity.

Then last week we took a closer look at Joseph. We don’t read a lot about Joseph’s life in the Bible – he kinda comes across as a minor player in the pages of Scripture, but as we saw last week, Joseph really was a spiritual giant – truly a model of righteous character and faith in God. He is perhaps one of the best examples for us to follow in how to be a godly father and husband.

Now today we want to look at a third major character in the Christmas story – and that of course, is Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Like Joseph, she too, is a pretty amazing example of someone who displayed an absolute trust in God. When you consider all that she went through – especially considering how young she was at the time – her faith and obedience to God are truly remarkable. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As I mentioned last week, when Matthew writes his Gospel and records the birth of Jesus, he focuses almost exclusively on Joseph. He begins with Joseph’s family tree, he talks about Joseph’s dilemma when he discovers that Mary was pregnant before they were married, and he records the four different visits that Joseph had from the angel. But he really doesn’t say anything about Mary.

In contrast to that, when Luke writes his Gospel, he hardly mentions Joseph at all. He focuses his attention primarily on Mary. And that’s why it’s so great that we have four different Gospels. Each Gospel tells the true story of Jesus, but they all tell it from a slightly different perspective. That really helps us get a well-rounded understanding of really happened.

And so now, having looked at Joseph through the eyes of Matthew last week, today we’re going to look at Mary through the eyes of Luke. So if you have your Bibles with you, you can turn with me to Luke chapter 1.

However, we’re not going to start at verse 1 because Luke doesn’t begin his Gospel with Mary – he actually begins with Mary’s relatives – specifically, a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth.

And I don’t want to spend a lot of time going through their story this morning, but let me just quickly summarize it for you so you know what’s going on when we get into Mary’s story.

Zechariah and Elizabeth have been unable to have children and the Bible describes them now as “both being very old.” Obviously too old now, to have any expectation of still being able to have children.

But one day, an angel named Gabriel appears to Zechariah and tells him that his wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a baby and that their baby would be the one to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. Of course, every Israelite had been waiting for the coming of the Lord for quite some time now. In fact, for the last several hundred years, God had promised through the prophets had that he would send a Messiah – a descendant of King David who would save the Israelites and would rule Israel forever!

So this was pretty huge news for Zechariah and Elizabeth – not only where they finally going to have the baby that they had always wanted, but their baby would prepare the way for the future King of Israel!

Oh and one more thing, their baby was going to be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth – and his name was to be John – we would eventually come to know him as John the Baptist.

So with that as the backdrop, Luke begins to tell the story of Mary in Luke chapter 1, verse 26.

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Published December 13, 2021

The Character of Joseph

Last week we began turning our attention towards Christmas – and we started, not by looking at the events surrounding Jesus birth, but rather by looking at Jesus Himself. We wanted to answer the question: Who exactly is Jesus?

And so to find that answer, we looked at the first few verses of the Gospel of John which remind us that before Jesus was even born, He existed as “The Word” – the eternal, all-powerful, second-person of the Godhead who is directly responsible for creating everything in the universe!

That in itself is a pretty astounding thought, but then we read John 1:14 which completely blew our minds! It says…

14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. John 1:14a

That is simply amazing! The infinite God of the heavens permanently fused his deity with our humanity and became human. We call Him Emmanuel because He is God-with-us. He became human like one of us. Even today in his resurrected state, Jesus is both fully God and fully human. And why did he do that? He came to be with us so that we could with Him forever.

I kinda like how the message Bible puts that verse. It says…

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. John 1:14a MSG

What an incredible thought! That God would love us (his created beings) so much that He chose to move into the neighbourhood to be with us!

But yet sadly, most people, both then and now, choose to reject him… As John stated in verse 10,

10 He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. John 1:10-12

And that’s really what Christmas is all about! Christmas is about God coming into the world so that those who believe him and accept him might become children of God. John 3:16 puts it quite simply….

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17 NIV

And so to answer our original question of “Who is Jesus?”…

Jesus is the Word – the eternally existing second person of the Godhead – our Creator. He is also Emmanuel – God with us – born on earth as a human being so that we might become children of God and be with Him forever.

So that’s what we looked at last week. This week, I want to continue looking at the characters of the Christmas story and this time, I want to ask the question: who is Joseph?

For being such a central figure in the Christmas story, Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, is a little bit of an enigma. We don’t really read a lot about his life story and in fact, as the Gospels go on to record Jesus’ adult life, we actually don’t hear anything further about Joseph – even though we often hear about Jesus’ mother, Mary.

But despite having very little information about him, from the information we do have, we can see that Joseph was a pretty exemplary husband, father, and follower of God. He was a man that we would do well to model our lives after! So this morning, I want to look at the brief snapshot that the Bible gives us of Joseph and see if we can pull some things outta there that we can learn and apply from his life.

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Published December 6, 2021

The Word Became Flesh

I had originally planned to wrap up the book of 1 Samuel this morning, but for a variety of reasons, I’ve decided to put that off for today, and instead, I’d like to begin turning our focus towards Christmas. I think Hope and all the kids have done a great job of starting that already as they take us through the progression of advent.

As we enter the season of Christmas, I think it’s important that we remind ourselves of it’s significance. Christmas is not just another holiday. It is foundational to our faith. Without the reality of that first Christmas, we truly would have no reason for hope, joy, or peace! The physical birth of Jesus Christ is central to our understanding of the Gospel. And so this morning, I want to remind us of the significance of Christmas.

Now the passage that I want to look at today isn’t one of your typical Christmas passages. It’s not directly related to the story of Mary & Joseph or the wisemen or the shepherds or even one of the many prophecies in the Old Testament that point us towards the birth of the Messiah. But it is very much related to the birth of Christ.

Each of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John) – all tell the story of Jesus, but they are all very different in how they approach the story of his birth. For example, Matthew tends to focus on Jesus’ father, Joseph, and he spends a great deal of time explaining the visit of the wise men and how King Herod reacted to the birth of this new born king! In contrast to that, Luke focuses more on Mary – and doesn’t even mention the wisemen, but he includes the details of the shepherds who were out in the fields and how the angels announced Jesus’ birth to them. Then, in contrast to both of Luke & Matthew, Mark skips over Jesus’ birth entirely and jumps into the story after Jesus was already an adult.

And that leaves us with the Gospel of John – which presents Jesus’ birth in yet another way. John doesn’t really give us any specific, historic details of Jesus’ birth, but rather, he gives us a brief summary or introduction to who Jesus is and then explains why Jesus was born – rather than giving us all the details of how Jesus was born. It’s a bit more of a big picture view rather than a detailed series of events.

And so that’s what I want to look at this morning. In the weeks ahead, we’ll go through the stories and events of how Jesus came to be born, but I want to start with the more foundational issue and that is “Who exactly is this Jesus who was born some 2000 years ago and what is so significant about his birth?”

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Published November 15, 2021

Out of the Frying Pan – Into the Fire

We have been hanging in suspense for three weeks now – waiting to see if there is any way that David will get out of the mess that He has created for himself.

If you’re just joining us for the first time this morning, we’ve been working our way through the book of 1 Samuel – examining the lives of Samuel, King Saul, and of course, David.

And at this point in the story, David has fled from King Saul – who has been tying to kill David for the last several chapters – and David has found refuge in a most unexpected place – in the land of his enemies, the Philistines.

King Achish of the Philistines had accepted him as a defector from Israel and had even given David his own Philistine city to live in – the city of Ziklag – where David and his 600 men (along with all their families) had lived for nearly a year and a half.

Now the tricky part in all this is that David had not actually defected from Israel. He was still loyal to his home country, but had been lying to King Achish about… well, just about everything. In fact, during those 16 months that David lived in Ziklag, David had told Achish that he had been raiding the cities of Israel, but in reality, David had been attacking the enemies of Israel – and leaving no survivors to tell Achish what had really happened.

And so Achish was convinced that David had turned against his homeland and would be a loyal Philistine subject for the rest of his life. In fact, Achish trusted David so completely that he made David his own personal bodyguard and insisted that David and his men accompany him into battle against Israel. It says in 1 Samuel 28:1

About that time the Philistines mustered their armies for another war with Israel. King Achish told David, “You and your men will be expected to join me in battle.”

1 Samuel 28:1

And certainly creates quite a pickle for David. On one hand, David has been anointed as the future King of Israel – and he has no intentions of fighting against his own people. It would be unthinkable for David to fight against the armies of Israel – against King Saul and against his best friend Jonathan! But on the other hand, if he refused to join the Philistines in battle, the jig would be up!

Achish would realize that David was still loyal to Israel, and David would effectively be caught in his lies and and he, his men, and all of their families would be at the mercy of the Philistines!

So really, David has no choice but to agree to go to war alongside the Philistines to fight the armies of Israel. And so he responds to King Achish in verse 2.

2 “Very well!” David agreed. “Now you will see for yourself what we can do.”

1 Samuel 28:2

I mean, what else could he say? David was forced to continue his charade – but he was probably desperately trying to figure out, how in the world, he was going to get out of this pickle!

And what makes this all the more interesting, is that the author of 1 Samuel never tells us what David is thinking. He never reveals David’s true motivations or why he does what he does. The author simply states what David says or does, but then he leaves it to our imaginations to try to figure what what’s going on in David’s heart and mind….

So we don’t know what kind of scenarios David had been running through his mind as to how he was going to get out of this situation… But I imagine there was one option that perhaps David considered. Maybe David had planned to turn against King Achish in the heat of the battle. He could flip sides and join the Israelites and hopefully bring about a great victory for Israel.

But that was risky too – because if David turned against the Philistines and Israel still lost, you can be sure that the Philistines would seek their revenge on David by destroying David’s family and the all of the families of his 600 men who were left behind in the Philistine city of Ziklag.

So if David was going to turn on the Philistines, he’d better make sure he wins!

But of course, that’s going to be a problem too, because unbeknownst to David, God had already decreed that Israel was going to lose this battle. We saw last week, as Saul tried to talk to the dead prophet Samuel through a medium, that God’s judgement was about fall upon Saul for his disobedience. God had decreed that both Saul and his sons would be killed in battle the very next day, and the Israelite army would be defeated at the hands of the Philistines.

Now of course, David doesn’t know that – but we, the reader of this story know that – and so we’re really left scratching our heads – HOW in the world is this all going to play out? What kind of miracle is God going to have to do to rescue David from the web of deceit that David has woven for himself?

Well, this morning, we will finally find out!

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Published November 8, 2021

Saul & the Rare Medium

Two weeks ago, we saw that the Philistines were preparing to go to war against the Israelites. Now of course, that’s not unusual – as you read through the Old testament, it seems these two nations are always preparing to go to war with each other. But this time is a little different. This time, David, the future king of Israel, is preparing to fight alongside the Philistines against the Israelites!

You’ll remember that David had fled from Saul and had found refuge among his enemies – the Philistines. They had accepted him as a defector from Israel and had even given David his own Philistine city to live in – the city of Ziklag – and David lived there for nearly a year and a half with his 600 men and all of their families.

Of course, during all this time, David had been lying to the Philistine King – King Achish – about his true loyalties – and more specifically about his true military expeditions. For those 16 months, David had actually been raiding the enemies of Israel, but he told Achish that he had been raiding Israel itself.

And so Achish was convinced that David had turned against his homeland and would be a loyal Philistine subject for the rest of his life. Therefore, when the time came that the Philistines were preparing a full scale invasion of Israel, King Achish expected David to be a key part of that.

1 Samuel 28 begins like this:

About that time the Philistines mustered their armies for another war with Israel. King Achish told David, “You and your men will be expected to join me in battle.”

2 “Very well!” David agreed. “Now you will see for yourself what we can do.”

Then Achish told David, “I will make you my personal bodyguard for life.”

1 Samuel 28:1-2

It’s seems crazy that King Achish would place so much trust in David – the very guy who killed the Philistine champion Goliath some years earlier! But none the less, at this point, we are left wondering, what in the world will David do now? Will he actually join the Philistines and fight against the Israelites – fighting against Saul and his best friend Jonathan? Or perhaps will David turn on king Achish in the heat of the battle and join forces with the Israelites? Or will something even more unexpected happen?

Well, unfortunately, we’re not going to find out until next week, because at this point, without any resolution, the story shifts the spotlight back over to King Saul.

From verse 3 and on, it’s like an entirely different story as we see how Saul reacts to this imminent battle against the Philistines. Now of course, both stories are woven together and we’ll see that more and more as we go on, but today’s passage will revolve exclusively around Saul.

Now at first glance, verse 3 seems kinda out of place itself. It reads kinda like some random facts that don’t have any apparent connection to the story at all. Let me show you what I mean. Verse 3 reads like this:

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Published October 29, 2021

David Talks To Himself

Last week we saw David at quite possibly one of his finest moments! King Saul was once again on the hunt for David, but one night, David snuck into his camp, and stole the spear and water jug that were by Saul’s head as he slept! And even as David stood above his sleeping nemesis, David refused to harm Saul – and instead chose to leave the fate of Saul in the hands of God.

As we’ve been going through the book of 1 Samuel, there have only a handful of times like this where David has displayed such boldness, such unwavering faith in God, such resolve to do what is right no matter the consequence….

It truly was an incredible mountain-top experience for David!

But of course, you know what Satan likes to do after those mountaintop experiences. After moments of great triumph and clearly seeing God at work, Satan loves to immediately come in a fill us with doubt and discouragement.

Take Elijah for example. Remember what happened after his mountaintop experience? Let me refresh your memory.

In the book of 1 Kings, we read about the time Elijah had the incredible experience of proving to Israel that the Lord alone was God – and that the false god Baal and all of his prophets were just a bunch a fakes! In fact, the Lord proved Himself by sending down fire from heaven – burning up Elijah’s offering in front of all the people. What an incredible experience! Elijah had faithfully stood on Mount Carmel as the lone representative of God as he faced off against 450 of the prophets of Baal – and God came through for him BIG time! That was certainly an incredible mountain top experience. But what happen to Elijah right after that? Do you remember?

Just a few verses after that story we read this:

3 Elijah was afraid and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there. 4 Then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died.”

1 Kings 19:3-4

Man! What happened to Elijah? Where’s the boldness we saw just verses before? Where’s the unwavering faith? Talk about doubt and discouragement! But that’s exactly what Satan loves to do after those mountaintop experiences.

You’ve probably experienced that yourself, and that’s exactly what we see in today’s story with David.

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